


Y moriré de amor (And Die Of Love)

by whetherwoman



Category: Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-12-18
Updated: 2010-12-18
Packaged: 2017-10-13 18:11:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,579
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/140210
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/whetherwoman/pseuds/whetherwoman
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Life’s not simple. He’s not a thinker like Butch, or educated like Etta, but he knows that.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Y moriré de amor (And Die Of Love)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [calicokat](https://archiveofourown.org/users/calicokat/gifts).



> Thank you so much to finch and Jamie for the beta help.
> 
> The title is from Sonnet LXVI by Pablo Neruda.

No one would see it if they didn’t know to look—even Butch wouldn’t see it—but Etta’s eyes are shining. She looks like she does every time he comes home—every inch the prim and proper schoolmarm, but burning like wildfire to anyone who has eyes to see. He solicitously takes her elbow as they climb the steps to the bank and feels the trembling that shivers through her small frame. He controls his breathing—they share this, blood that heats up around guns and money and, soon, running. There's going to be good times when they finish this job, he knows—up against a wall somewhere, probably, or barely behind the cover of a rock while it's Butch's watch, Sundance's hand over Etta's mouth because she doesn't even try to be quiet when it's like this.

He takes a deep breath—again—and puts those thoughts aside. His hands are steady, as always. Etta's a fine marksman and can ride better than him or Butch if he's honest, but she'll never be a top notch gunman if she can't control that shaking she does.

Not that he wants her to be a gunman.

But they're at the window now, going into their song and dance. He's masterful, she's paranoid, he's rational, she's flighty. And there's the general manager, right on cue, ushering the lovely young couple straight downstairs.

Sundance glances at Etta again and can't help but admire her nerve. Some days he wishes she'd never come with them to Bolivia (maybe wishes he'd never met her, not that he'd admit it) but she's got nerve. He can feel her tremble against his side but her voice is steady, her cheeks barely flushed. She's gripping her little bag, but her knuckles aren't white.

She meets his eyes as she opens her bag and offers up his gun, and his breath catches in spite of himself. Those eyes are sparkling more than all the diamonds he's ever stolen.

* * *

Here’s how it happened:

Butch said _dame tus dólores_ instead of _dame tu dinero_. Sundance shot the bank teller who laughed. Butch and Sundance hightailed out of there and didn’t get the money. Butch swore at Sundance. Sundance stormed off and didn’t come back. Etta found Sundance, drunk as a skunk, three days later and two towns over. Etta told Butch and Sundance they were going to try something different now.

Butch didn’t complain about staying outside with the horses. Sundance didn’t apologize, but he thought about it.

* * *

He'd do ridiculous things for her—give her diamonds and pretty hats, flee the country, make a fool of himself trying to learn Spanish. Give up robbing and thieving. And she knows it, is the worst of it. He's not the smartest man around, especially not next to Butch, thinking champion of the world, but he can see the words on the tip of Etta's tongue clear as he sees the targets he shoots at. He's always seen clearest out of the corner of his eye.

She never says it. She's never said it and she never will, but he can _see_ it and it drives him crazy. Sundance, let's settle down. Sundance, stop robbing and murdering. Sundance, let's buy some land and some cattle and have a baby boy, no, two boys and a girls, no, three boys and four girls, and we'll all bow our heads when you say grace over my chicken stew on Sunday night. She could make him do it, because in the end she's stronger than him. And because she's stronger than him, she'll never ask.

It drives him crazy. It makes him say stupid things, things he regrets the second they’re out of his mouth. It makes him turn around and walk away when he sees her talking to Butch, sees him kiss her cheek, the way she smiles up at him, free and easy like she never is around Sundance anymore. It makes him wish she’d turn to Butch for something more, even as the thought makes something sick and furious ball up in his stomach. He could see it so clearly—maybe after he comes back from patrol at night, her long hair falling down as she rides Butch, the curve of her breast glistening with sweat in the firelight, that shit-eating grin on Butch’s face, the one he gets when every goddamn lady in the world falls over herself to bed him. Or worse, a real smile, the one he turns on Sundance sometimes after a particularly implausible getaway. The looks on both their faces when they see him.

It would be so easy, then. Some yelling, some crying, maybe some shooting. (When he’s most honest with himself, he knows there’d be no shooting.) Butch and Etta buy a ranch and make babies and become upstanding citizens. Sundance rides off into the sunset and probably drinks himself to death. Simple.

Life’s not simple. He’s not a thinker like Butch, or educated like Etta, but he knows that.

* * *

She leaves; of course she leaves. And maybe she's not stronger than he is after all, maybe she's as weak as Butch and Sundance both, because all three of them are caught up in a game of pretend. Playing like children that Etta's just going on ahead, that Butch and Sundance will catch up with her later on, that none of them remember what Etta said before they came to Bolivia. Pretending that Etta can do whatever she wants. That Etta doesn't care what they want.

Sundance lies in the dark, eyes open, unable to imagine a world where he and Butch and Etta go back to the States and live to a ripe old age together. He and Butch would go straight again, maybe start a ranch after all—Lefors would stop chasing them—Etta would get that sparkle in her eye and that delicate tremor in her thin body because of something other than guns or money or danger. It all seems impossible in the thick darkness of the Bolivian night.

He tries to imagine Etta back up in the States by herself. Maybe she's had her fill of adventure now, and she'll go back to being a schoolteacher. Maybe get married, have babies and grandbabies, live to be ninety. Or maybe she won't—Etta was a schoolteacher when Sundance met her, but he has his suspicions she wasn't always. He knows he wasn't the first man to lie with her, and she didn't learn to shoot a gun and ride a horse from books. But he hasn't asked. Maybe he's not sending her back to be a schoolmarm. She won't starve—she didn't starve before she met him. He doesn’t want to think about what she will do. What she could do.

He'll never ask, now.

* * *

They stay pretty busy, after that. They stay on the move, no more wasting time eating at fancy restaurants or buying fancy clothes. Sundance doesn’t think about Etta much, and when he does it’s mostly to be thankful she’s not there.

Butch doesn’t say anything about Etta and Sundance assumes he’s not thinking about her either. The thing is, it’s always been Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. Sundance can maybe imagine settling down with Etta, or Etta leaving Sundance and going off with Butch, but that’s why Sundance isn’t the one who does the thinking. It’ll never happen. This—this makes sense. This is how it had to be. Butch and Sundance, on the run, Butch with his big ideas and Sundance with his gun and both of them with more money than they know what to do with, now there’s no one to spend it on.

They stay busy and Sundance doesn’t think about Etta, but one night out of nowhere Butch says, “You ever wonder what Etta’s doing?”

“No,” says Sundance.

“Me neither,” Butch says. The fire crackles. They’re sitting side by side with their backs to the fire, looking out into the darkness so they don’t lose night vision. Sundance’s back is warm, and so’s the side that’s next to Butch. His left side. He keeps his gun hand free all the time now.

“You miss her?” Butch says.

“No,” Sundance says. “This is no life for a lady.”

Butch doesn’t say anything.

“Never was, neither,” says Sundance. “Don’t know why she came at all.”

“I just wonder,” says Butch. “If she’ll hear about it when we… you know. If we don’t go back there.”

Sundance shifts uneasily. They haven’t been talking much lately, him and Butch, just planning and robbing and moving on, and Sundance likes it that way. Butch is great at thinking, but he spends too much time in his head and he starts getting maudlin.

They sit in silence for a few minutes longer. Finally, Butch heaves a sigh and shifts away from Sundance. “Get some sleep,” he says. “I’ll watch first.”

Sundance gets into his bedroll and closes his eyes. His left shoulder feels cold, even though it’s closer to the fire. The seasons are shifting, up in the high mountain desert.

“I think she’ll hear,” Butch says quietly.

“Yeah?” Sundance says, half asleep.

“I think everyone will hear about us,” Butch says. “Bandidos yanquis. Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.”

“I’d like that,” Sundance mumbles. “Everyone knows about us.”

As he falls asleep, he thinks he hears Butch say, “I wonder if we’ll ever hear about Etta.” But he might not have heard anything at all.

**Author's Note:**

> Soneto LXVI - Pablo Neruda
> 
> No te quiero sino porque te quiero  
> y de quererte a no quererte llego  
> y de esperarte cuando no te espero  
> pasa mi corazón del frío al fuego.
> 
> Te quiero sólo porque a ti te quiero,  
> te odio sin fin, y odiándote te ruego,  
> y la medida de mi amor viajero  
> es no verte y amarte como un ciego.
> 
> Tal vez consumirá la luz de Enero,  
> su rayo cruel, mi corazón entero,  
> robándome la llave del sosiego.
> 
> En esta historia sólo yo me muero  
> y moriré de amor porque te quiero,  
> porque te quiero, amor, a sangre y fuego.


End file.
